The Butterfly’s Ghost

[Aeri]

Seven months.

Seven months it had been since Cassandra left LAW, going completely off the grid. Having returned to Greece, the battered little butterfly had left her apartment in a fit, looking like an active crime scene. It really did seem like the end of a chapter, leaving the butterfly girl away from law permantly. Torn wings marked her gravestone, and Cassandra had been dead and buried.

But seven months later, the apartment’s doors opened again. A key clicked, and Cassandra walked in. Silently, she entered the room and took up her LAW issued phone. She hadn’t officially announced her resignation, and was very close to being shut away due to her silence. She’d put it on charging in a nearby socket.. before clicking the lights on.

Which fails. Of course, nobody was paying the bills. Her cousin said he would get that fixed later today, but for now Cassandra went to her bedroom and sat down on her bed, her gaze locking on the small smear of dried blood from last time she had been here. The petite woman sighed. Leaving the room, she’d start to wheel in a tray with soapy water, rags and mops.

And then she cleaned. Cleaned the blood, cleaned the torn fabric, dusted her room and made her bed, in next to no light. She liked it that way anyways, the darkness left her with less stimuli to distract her.

…

Click.

The lights were back on as Cassandra was cleaning the bathroom. Her eyes caught her own gaze in the mirror, as the normally jovial butterfly pursed her lips softly, standing up and staring herself down.

She had changed. She hadn’t had a haircut in those seven months for one. Her hair was now longer, wilder and a fair bit shaggier. Cassandra had broader shoulders now, her already dark skin looking even darker, as if she had transitioned from milk chocolate to dark chocolate. Her biceps were a fair bit bigger, burn scars circling them now. But her face.. Cassandra had two new markings there. A burn mark across the left side of her jawline and a small cut right underneath her right eye.

She looked like a different person. Her eyes, once filled with life.. had a new perspective. They looked just a bit more wilder, blue strands of hair resting on her shoulders. She looked.. wrong, even to herself.

Suddenly, she was snapped out of her thoughts as her phone began to buzz. Finally all the messages she had gotten began to come back, and the formerly cuddly lightweight.. well she was still cuddly, but a bit more jaded.. walked over to the old phone she had. Saori, the Bugs, Kate, Alizeh, even her mother. Cass let out a small, dry giggle, laughing to herself.

“.. oh, they’re going to kill me..”

.. but her smile rather quickly faded away into a more somber expression. Cass didn’t know if she could face them, not with how she ditched.. and not with how she broke her promise at the Apex. Shaking her head, she’d start to get second thoughts.

..

And then the bell rang. She’d open, only to find a briefcase.

She’d open it, in her room, on her bed. It was her new outfit. Cassie couldn’t deny one thing.. it was beautiful. Svelte, smooth and looking like it had been woven out of gossamer from fairy tales, Cassandra thought it fit her well. The stitched butterfly emblem too, it caught her eye.

She deserved to try. But she wouldn’t be the same. She’d be back from the dead, a phantom of the ring.

The Ghost Butterfly of LAW.